Marionette
by Screaming Faeries
Summary: Myrtle died to fund Tom Riddle's first Horcrux, but what were the two thinking when this event took place so long ago, in the girls lavatories on the first floor? She had fallen like a marionette, and Riddle had stood in the shadows, laughing and waiting, with his childhood diary. Her death was for a good cause. Written for the Quidditch Leagues (Beater 2, Bellycastle Bats)


**A.N**: My entry for the Quidditch Leagues as Beater 2 for the Bellycastle Bats. Task: Write about Tom Riddle's diary. Prompts used: (POV) First Person, (word) happy, (song) Take a Bow by Rihanna.

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oOo

_The award for the best lie goes to you._

oOo

Everything was foggy, and full of bright, white light. I tried to sit up and adjust, but then I remembered those horrible, huge eyes I had seen just seconds ago. What if they were still there? I felt a plummeting sensation in my stomach—wait, did I?

No. I couldn't feel anything. It was as though my whole body was completely numb, but there wasn't even a spark of feeling within me. It was like when you got cramp in your leg, and it was as if it was dead.

Was I _dead?_

I reached up to my face to feel for my glasses – but when I felt for where my face should have been, I couldn't grab hold of anything. What was wrong with me?

The fog started to clear, and I could see shapes looming in front of me. Porcelain white sinks, shiny steel taps and pipes, and the orange glow from the candles, lurking like blurred orange suns along the upper walls. There was someone lying across the floor, and as I wandered towards them, I recognised the person. She had long, dark brown hair in pigtails, and round spectacles. She was wearing her Hogwarts robes with a Ravenclaw emblem across the breast. The girl was flat on her back, with one arm across her chest, and her eyes were wide, her mouth permanently hung open in shock, or like she had just been speaking. I recognised her, because the girl was me.

The realisation washed over me like a tidal wave. I was dead. Whoever had looked at me with those great yellow eyes had killed me. But instead of feeling pitiful, the first thing I felt was relief. No longer would I have to stand the constant, merciless teasing. No long would I have to endure Olive Hornby bullying me and trying to steal my glasses when I took them off in the Common Room. No longer would I be rushing to this very same bathroom, crying my eyes out pathetically in the U-bend. Was I free? Was I a ghost? I looked down at myself, and realised I was no longer wearing robes of black; but I appeared to be _transparent. _

I could soar and fly and somersault and float through the windows and appear on the other side. I no longer had any body mass. I was just a human-shaped expanse of dense fog and ectoplasm, but somehow still with fully working thoughts.

I had just taken a seat in the window that looked over the whole of the lavatory, when I heard footsteps. A boy walked in – and he was talking in a foreign language. It was the same voice and the same language that I had heard moments before I died. Now that I saw the boy, I recognised him – he was in the fifth year, and the crest on his robes represented that he was from Slytherin. With his strong jaw, dark, wavy hair and tall, handsome physique, I knew instantly that he was Tom Riddle – the boy that most girls in the school fawned over, but he seemed to show no interest in any of the witches at Hogwarts, not even ones in his own house and year.

So why was he strolling into the girls bathroom as bold as brass, clutching a black, leather bound book in his hand? Why did he stop at my empty body, and kneel down beside my lifeless form? Why did he place that book upon my chest like a talisman? What was his motive?

oOo

I was surprised at how swift and effortless the Basilisk was in killing the Mudblood girl. The great snake had slid out of the pipes the moment I called for it, and as soon as it had made eye contact with the girl, she had dropped dead.

It was marvellous, really. She had fallen so inelegantly – a marionette with the strings cut suddenly. The power of the Basilisk had stopped her heart beating, just like that.

As I knelt down at the cold body of the younger girl – I think her name was Myrtle – my only regret was that I couldn't detail this event into my diary. I lay the old book on top of her still form, feeling a smirk playing on my face.

I had done her a favour, by making her a part of me forever. Killing her may have seemed cruel and vindictive; but it was for a worthy cause, to make this first horcrux of mine. She was pathetic. Bullied in the classroom and teased in the corridors. She had spent most of her time crying in this very bathroom, it was fate, pure fate, which had led her to come to this lavatory. Myrtle could have thrown herself into any bathroom in the castle to hide in, but instead she always came back to this one – the one that chambered so many secrets, secrets that she couldn't even imagine…

No. Instead she came here, and she had become the sacrifice to my cause. Her death had allowed me to split my soul like Professor Slughorn had told me about. I was initially concerned that I wouldn't be able to perform the dark magic he spoke of at my first time, but I was victorious. The pain had seared through me; like a ragged shard of glass striking and dragging through the very core of me, ripping a whole part of me into two. But when I looked down at the diary after that; felt it's worn leather cover, leafed through the parchment pages for another time…there was blood in its lines. My heart beat through the pages as easily as if it had its own life form.

And Myrtle had been such a wonderful sacrifice.

I stood up, clutching the diary that I would soon hide within Hogwarts to later reveal itself to some lucky Slytherin, who would pass it on and make it possible for the Chamber of Secrets to be opened once more. Just before I left the bathroom, I took one last look at the girl on the floor, the girl who had paid such a huge part in my evolution, but knew nothing of her sacrifice. Soon she would be removed, but her memory would grace the halls of this bathroom.

Forever, just as forever as my diary would be.


End file.
